"Blacken the sky Can't stand to see the sun The truth of light Reveals the hatred that has won" – I Saw The End by Pallbearer

Hailing from Dublin, Ireland Dunmharu just released Finding the Eternal in April. Dunmharu plays black metal in the traditional sense and mixes in some new age black metal as well. The new and the old mix as a cohesive unit bringing forth the best of what both styles of play have to offer.

Finding the Eternal marks the bands’ sixth release in three years. The duo know how to mix things up and keep an album interesting. The songs twist and turn in multiple directions always keeping you on your toes making you guess when the next hairpin turn will come up.

Finding the Eternal is an onslaught of heavy back breaking metal. Every aspect of black metal is present to this sordid party and then some. The riffs can be furious in typical black metal fashion. But unlike the black metal of old the musicianship is tight and doesn’t sound like a two year old found pots and pans to bang on. Oh no, the production is solid, the musicianship is tight and the songs are crisp.

Each song-save for the intro-is long. Long songs don’t always mean good songs however. A lot of longer songs I feel get lost and wander off into tangents that are not actually present or ready to be explored. With Dunmharu the songs are long and they tell a story. The six tracks present here on this pitch-black bible burner of an album weave a tale and they connect making for an evil, bleak, dark story. Finding the Eternal looms over head like a towering pillar of blasphemy that takes you from the side of light into the darkness filling your head with clouds of hate and bitterness.

Instead of focusing on the overall brooding darkness of Finding the Eternal we should shift our attention to the instruments that help portray this blackness. The riffs are sharp and concise, the drums are delivered with a blow and the bass is there to provide more backbone than the album already possesses. Each song has constant cold and sinister black metal riffs, unique time changes and the ability to be hectic at certain points and melodic and brooding in others.

Adding to the witches brew are the vocals which are part black metal part death metal. The shrieks are there to burst your ear drums, but the vocals drop into a lower death metal octave to throw a curve ball at you keeping you off balance. The lyrics are audible and the vocals aren’t so high pitched or too low where you cannot understand a word the vocalist is saying.

The album rolls on through six songs painting pictures of nightmarish dreamscapes of hellish looking thunder clouds, barren lands in the middle of hell, and anything else that could make you think black metal. Who knew Ireland could be so foreboding and evil? So, I say pour yourself a nice dark, black glass of Guinness, and enjoy some Irish beer with some great Irish black metal.